1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a mobile communication terminal, and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for transmitting multimedia messages in a mobile communication terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, with new developments in mobile communication technology, Multimedia Message Service (hereinafter, referred to as MMS), used to transmit MMS messages is being offered to mobile communication terminal consumers. MMS, as defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specifications 22.140 and 23.140, is a service that allows the transmission and receipt of not only text messages, but also voice and audio, still image and video, and a variety of multimedia data between mobile communication terminals.
The MMS defined in the 3GPP adopts a store and forward method. Because the multimedia messages are of substantial size, they cannot be sent and received in the same way that short text messages are transmitted using the short message service (SMS). They must pass through a central, MMS server to be forwarded to the recipient's terminal.
Here, the process in which the MMS message is sent involves the following steps. The MMS message is created in and sent to the MMS server through the sender's terminal. The MMS server that receives the MMS message sends a MMS notification message to the recipient's terminal to notify that the MMS message has been received. The recipient is made aware through the MMS notification message that the MMS message has been received, and can opt to connect to the MMS server and check the MMS message stored in the MMS server. Thus, the user of the receiving terminal is able to accurately receive an MMS message of a comparatively large size. At this time, the MMS message is encapsulated and sent with the media content of the message, i.e. the data required to describe the media content of the message and the address data required to discern the message recipient.
However, the functions of the recipient's terminal may not be completely compatible with the functions of the multimedia content made through the sender's terminal. In other words, the MMS message created and sent by the sender's terminal may have a variety of attached media files, and the recipient's terminal may be incapable of processing all or a portion of the attached media file formats. In this case, an MMS server of the related art must either remove files that are incompatible with the recipient's terminal or alter the file formats to create a compatible format before sending the files. The altering (transcoding) or deleting process is carried out by a capability negotiation with a User Agent (UA) profile of the recipient's terminal.
As a result, it is not always possible for a recipient to receive all the original media files sent by the sender. Therefore, the recipient may receive messages of poor quality. For example, the resolution of an image file may be low, or the file may be received with a portion deleted. In this case, there is no way for the recipient to determine whether the file was sent in this condition.